


navy bean soup and the contradictory human race

by handschuhmaus



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Darth Plagueis - James Luceno
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crescent Dragonwagon, Harry Potter References, Infidelity, Neopronouns, Nonbinary Character, Physics, Trans Character, deadnaming and misgendering, gender stereotypes, science history
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-08-11 04:46:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16469045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: Or, how Rugess Nome unintentionally became a parent (a modern AU)





	navy bean soup and the contradictory human race

They had both renamed themselves. For Rugess, it was an idiosyncratic reference to a children's series with some questionable qualities. For Tema it was...well, ae couldn't say why she had chosen that, exactly.

Rugess was older, and felt some sort of almost paternal sentiment towards aes roommate Tema. Older, because well, one's parents separating suddenly after it transpired that aes dad had an interrupted affair with a coworker, having hitherto never suggested he could be gay (or bi) was an inconvenient thing and revved to be disruptive. But really ae had been in a place of self discovery and had only somewhat reluctantly yielded to aes mother Glenn's encouragement to study properly. 

Glenn had been convinced her daughter should be artistic. She was a member of the board of a charitable foundation, which did such nice things as help inner city kids go to museums, fundraise for a local public broadcasting station, and pay to put cooking classes in the local school district. Rowan Nome worked in computers, but not, exactly, computers as the public had come to understand them during Rugess's life time. Industrial tests and engineering computations, oscilloscopes and digital data pickups and he had books on FORTRAN. Glenn saw these things as abysmally soulless.

Rugess had settled on studying architecture (for the art), and history. Tema wasn't, as such, studying. It was almost like a throwback to the Agatha Christie novel _Third Girl_ , with rich young women moving to town to...to what ae hadn't a clue. But somehow ae liked Tema, and before aem just now, across the room on a lone shelf, were some of her cookbooks, on beans, and cornbread, and soup and bread, and an unwieldy vegetarian omnibus. Tema was attempting vegetarianism and that did not bother her roommate, but ae remained technically omnivorous and threatened mutiny if Tema were to go a step further and object to aes milk and cheese and eggs and toast with proper butter. All the same, the books, which were not focused on veganism, held a lot of memories, through aes fondness for Tema.

Aes phone buzzed, a message notification.  
_Dad: lunch today? I'll buy u a fancy meal._

Rowan was...better at texting than Glenn was, but he didn't communicate with aem very often, and didn't have the textual cues down that younger people did.

"Rugess?" Tema asked, twirling a lock of her platinum dyed hair in her fingers as she walked out of her bedroom, "are you busy?"

"Not tremendously," ae allowed.

"I was just reading about Fourier. You know him?" She brandished a book.

"No."

"There's something about a discreet transform, which I don't understand—do you?"

"I have absolutely no idea" ae said, and plucked up aes phone to reply. _ok. sure._

The reply to aes reply came back almost immediately.  
_Dad: meet you at Northside Mall by Macys doors?_

 _noon?_ Rugess quickly swiped in, while Tema set down her book on the coffee table and perused aes bookshelf.

Remarkably quickly, the reply came back, _Dad: yes._. Then another message came in, flashing the first lines across the top of the screen. _Mom: hey. Do you like the sunny weather? be my plus one at banquet Friday? We're_ Rugess was not terrifically interested in dressing up to attend the quarterly fundraising banquet, at which ae would be deadnamed by Glenn's colleagues and expected to talk about aes achievements in class and quite possibly, now, aes non-existent significant other.

Tema pulled a mathematical reference from Rugess's shelf (Ae had been good at math, anyway, and some eventual understanding of physics seemed prudent for the design of structures or vessels.), and then walked into the bathroom.

Rugess looked at the book Tema had put on the coffee table. _Wave Phenomena for the Foolish_ , it proclaimed itself to be, with some very physics oriented illustrations. Hmmm. Tema too had taken all the math courses on offer in high school. Ae called after aes roommate "You could take a physics class, you know. I'd take it with you."

Tema did not reply, and ae returned to aes history, trying to focus on the reading instead of getting lost in a reverie thinking about Tema. It was ten-thirty and the mall was only fifteen minutes away, so ae would have time to finish the reading— 

Tema returned from the bathroom, brandishing a small stick like device before aem. Ae wondered for a moment if she had a fever, which seemed to have come on with no warning if it was. 

"Rugess," she said in a small and anxious voice, "I'm pregnant."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nb: should discourteous dialogue about dietary choices ensue in the comments, they may be subject to moderation in the future (with such discourteous comments being subject to deletion)


End file.
